


sinew

by besselfcn



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Chronic Pain, Implied Sexual Content, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Loss of Limbs, M/M, Massage, Trans Jesse McCree
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-15
Updated: 2018-04-15
Packaged: 2019-04-23 09:22:31
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,499
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14329395
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/besselfcn/pseuds/besselfcn
Summary: But he gets through it, y’know? He gets through the days: the treatments, and the examinations, and the fifth or sixth or twelfth debrief of that mission, and the quiet words of whispered support from just about everyone except, you know, the guy who sent him off to have his arm blown to bits--but he gets through the days.It’s the nights that give him hell.--(Genji helps.)





	sinew

At least it’s not his shooting arm.

Jesse clings to that thought like a life raft, keeping him afloat on the days when he wants to go under. So what, he lost his arm. So what, he has to relearn basic shit like how to dress himself, wash himself, light his own damn cigar. So what, it hurts, hurts like a son of a bitch, hurts so bad some days he thinks he wants to go to Dr. Z and ask her to chop of the rest of it, oh, God, tear the nerve implants out where they burn his flesh, jam Peacekeeper into his shoulder socket and do the job for her--

So what.

At least it’s not his shooting arm.

So he submits to the shit they put him through, trying to get him accustomed to the hunk of metal and carbon and wire that is his new lefty. _Physical therapy_ , Dr. Z calls it. _Necessary torture_ , Genji sneers every time Jesse mentions it. He’s leaning more towards Genji’s side, lately, what with the exercises he’s meant to do, the electric jolts it sends running through him, down to the spine. The way he ends nearly every session feeling like he’s gritting his jaws so tight he’s about to crack a tooth.

“You’re doing well, Jesse,” Dr. Z tells him. “You’re making an outstanding recovery.”

“Figure you’re still not upping my pain pills, are you, Doc?” he responds, and she always sighs.

“I know it’s difficult,” she says. “But it’s--”

“Not worth the risk of addiction, yeah, yeah. I got ya. I’ll stick to whiskey for now.” A wink, and a click of the tongue. She just rolls her eyes.

(And stick to whiskey he does--knocks back more than he knows he ought to these days, but it dulls it all, the clamoring in his head, the memories that come when he closes his eyes, the empty space where a limb used to be.)

But he gets through it, y’know? He gets through the days: the treatments, and the examinations, and the fifth or sixth or twelfth debrief of that mission, and the quiet words of whispered support from just about everyone except, you know, the guy who sent him off to have his arm blown to bits--but he gets through the days.

It’s the nights that give him hell.

Nights where he’s lying in bed, face buried into the pillow, teeth clenching down into the cotton as he bites and bites and tries not to scream ‘cause he’s not alone in these god damn barracks, and his one arm claws at the bedsheets and the stump pushes heavy against the mattress like that’s gonna dull the searing pain, like that’s gonna make every muscle scrap he has left stop clenching its way around ragged scar tissue. And he doesn’t want to cry and he won’t cry but he cries, hot and angry tears down his cheeks, not sure if they’re pain or grief or some other feeling that keeps getting buried under the two of those these days, while he gasps for breath even though he’s breathing just fine.

“Jesse.”

If his body weren’t so tense he’d jolt; instead he lets out a shuddering breath and turns his head to the side, just enough to see Genji kneeling by his bed. He doesn’t know when Genji woke up; doesn’t know, he realizes, if he ever fell asleep, or if Jesse was just too gone already when he came to bed.

“‘M fine,” Jesse pants, even though he’s a damn terrible liar, and even though Genji didn’t ask.

“May I help?” he asks, as openly sincere as ever, and Jesse lets out a harsh laugh.

“Be my fuckin’ guest,” he says, and before he can get out anything more biting, Genji’s knees are on either side of his hips, his robotic joints hissing as they lock in place.

“The scar tissue around the wound is painful,” Genji says, and Jesse buries his face in the pillow again as he feels Genji’s fingers, both metal and flesh, both unusually warm, pressing into the flesh of his shoulder. “But the nerve implants are what is causing you the most pain, yes?”

With the faint sounds of metal-on-metal, his fingers flex as they work down Jesse’s arm, smoothing out knots as they go.

“Feels like the inside of my damn arm is on fire,” Jesse mutters into the pillow.

“The implants are like new nerve endings,” Genji says, and as his metal fingers brush gently over one Jesse’s entire body jolts. “Raw. Exposed to the air. They are too sensitive. This is what causes pain.”

“And this little massage is gonna help that?”

Genji laughs, his fingers working up again, back to the shoulder joint, over the curve of Jesse’s back, all the way up to the base of the neck.

“It will soften the muscle,” Genji says. “Encourage your body to quit fighting so hard against itself.”

He must have some kind of control over the temperature in his metal fingers, Jesse thinks. He uses his regular fingers only to guide the metallic ones across Jesse’s back, and they’re almost painfully hot now, over the skin and muscle and bone. But only almost.

“Someone do this for you?” Jesse asks.

Genji is quiet for a long moment as his fingers work. “No.”

Jesse drinks in the feeling of knots worked out of his arm, of warmth over uneven scar tissue. “Wish they had?”

Genji says nothing.

And in the midst of all of this, of Genji working his way across Jesse’s skin, Jesse is realizing with a growing feeling of embarrassment-resentment-exasperation that he feels slick and hot between his legs. And _hell no, McCree_ , he thinks, _you ain’t fuckin’ getting off to this_.

Except that he is, and he’s beginning to suspect Genji knows it.

Genji’s let his knees bend further, let himself settle down into the small of Jesse’s back. Jesse knows for sure, now, that the heat in his fingers is some kind of enhancement, because the metal-and-synthetic-fiber against his back is cool to the touch, an odd contrast to his shoulders. And Genji’s pressing down harder there, now, letting his hands linger longer, bringing them up further, until they wander across Jesse’s back all the way down to where Genji’s body meets his before traveling back up to what was his arm.

Whatever it is, though, whatever Genji thinks he’s doing, it’s working. The pain has quieted from a fire to the dull burning of embers: still there, still sending sparks through him, but not so much he thinks it’ll consume him.

When Genji lifts his hands away and sits up enough that Jesse can move, Jesse turns over to face him. In the dark, he can’t see much but the glint of Genji’s metal jawline, the tilt of his head. It’s impossible to read his expression.

“God damn, Shimada,” Jesse breathes. “You’re a miracle worker.”

“Genji,” he corrects, flat and steady.

“Genji,” Jesse echoes back, and Genji nods.

Jesse tilts his head up, close enough to see the careful, pinched look in Genji’s eyes. “Well?” he asks. “You gonna kiss me, or no?”

Genji doesn't answer, at least not out loud.

Instead he leans forward, brushing his lips against Jesse’s--and it’s a clumsy kiss, one that tastes too much like metal and feels stiff and cold besides--but there’s intent behind it, and something like the soft yielding of flesh, and between the haze in his head and his stomach Jesse still manages to think he should compliment Dr. Z on her work.

“God damn,” Jesse breathes, and Genji moves further down, kisses a line down the neck and chest, across the scars that pepper Jesse’s body as if he’s seeing them for the first time.

“Tell me to stop if you are uncomfortable,” Genji says, and Jesse hums his assent.

As Genji moves further down Jesse’s body, Jesse watches him, his hand stroking its way through Genji’s hair. He looks over Genji’s back, to the diagonal cut across his spine, to the place where metal binds to his skin, where it keeps him together, alive.

“Can I ask you something?” Jesse whispers, and Genji looks up at him. “Does it stop hurting like that, eventually?”

Genji pauses, his hands on Jesse’s thighs. He looks, for the first time since Jesse has known him, as if he is about to lie.

“No,” he says instead, and presses a kiss to Jesse’s hip bone.

Jesse chokes on a laugh. “Then how do you fuckin’ live with it?”

Genji’s fingers hook into the waistband of his pants and his boxers too, pull them down over Jesse’s hips with a quick, solid motion.

“Because they wanted you to die,” he says thoughtfully, and wraps his hands under Jesse’s thighs. “And after suffering like this, how could you let them win?”

He takes Jesse into his mouth, and for a moment it’s more than the pain.

**Author's Note:**

> Comments always welcome, never required!
> 
> & I have a tumblr by the same name if you'd like to come say hi!


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